Students plastered it to dorm room walls around the world. Mathematicians received hundreds of letters, eager requests for printouts of the set. (In response, some of them produced catalogs, complete with price lists; others compiled its most striking features into books.) More tech-savvy fans could turn to the August 1985 issue of Scientific American. On its cover, the Mandelbrot set unfolded in fiery tendrils, its border aflame; inside were careful programming instructions, detailing how readers might generate the iconic image for themselves. By then, those tendrils had also extended their reach far beyond mathematics, into seemingly unrelated corners of everyday life. Within the next few years, the Mandelbrot set would inspire David Hockney's newest paintings and several musicians' newest compositions ?" fuguelike pieces in the style of Bach. It would appear in the pages of John Updike's fiction, and guide how the literary critic Hugh Kenner analyzed the poetry of Ezra Pou